If I play a test tone of 50hz and then walk all the way to the listening position you virtually cannot hear it at all. So where does the 50hz go?

Hi Paul,

Of course with the remainder of your long post as context :

I think you should run such a room mode calculator for the two parts of your room and most probably you will see that no voodoo is going on (I know you did not state that, but as long as we don't understand it often ends up as that ).So what I dare predict is that all the longitudinal way the 50Hz is cancelled out because of the height of your room and then combined with the width. This makes shifting the back or forward the listening position not a solution. Btw, the same was going on with Mani's although I recall something else as 50Hz for that, but never mind.

Now run the same calculator through your conservatory of which you already know that at least the width is very different. With a bit of luck in there the 50Hz rules the other way around and instead of a notch because of cancelation you have a peak because of addition. It would be very coincidental, but it can happen.

Btw initially - when I read your post - I had the idea that the 50Hz would bounce back from the wall behind you and work out in the conservatory. But I don't think I can justify that together with the cancellation in that part of the room where also the bouncing back should occur. A bit of a far sought option would be that the wave travels along e.g. the ceiling (or any of the other 3 surfaces) which you did not observe (measure) and works out to normal listening height in the conservatory. If you use a tool which can visualise where the wave of interest is audible, you will see it in there. So *if* you can see that the 50Hz is somewhere still for sure, it would be my bet that it works out in the conservatory. Thus not of what the back of the speaker is doing, but what bouncing back from the wall behind you implies.

This stuff is not to be underestimated. For example, Bert has had his large Orelo's in the middle of his room (similar to you, Paul). Well, if you did not first go to the normal listening position (with a nice flat / straight wall behind it and even corners) and listened from behind the speakers (face to the listening position), you would buy the speaker, so normally is that sounding all over. And mind you, that is in the face of the back of the (open) woofers !!It is only that when later listening from the normal listening position you'll easily hear more highs. But actually you had no idea that they lacked and more importantly, all was in proper balance (distance from behind the speaker to the opposite wall is about 6 meters).

I am sneakily laughing a litte bit because apparently people who lack the experience of normal RAM Disk playback, can never understand the RAM-OS Disk thing.But undubtedly this is because in this world people spread the word that even an SSD is a "RAM Disk". This is wrong as such, because the phenomenon RAMDisk exists as long as MS-Dos exists, and probably earlier.

A RAMDisk is an area in internal memory of the computer (like your PC may contain 16GB of such internal memory) which is defined as "mapped disk". So what happens is that special driver programs like IMDisk allocate such area of memory (could be of any size (say 4GB) as long as enough remains for the OS itself and space for some other programs). Now a Drive Letter is assigned to that like M: or whatever you like and it totally looks like if it is a disk. But it is memory.All IO to that "disk" is now blazingly fast because memory is so fast. It is infinitely faster as a normal disk and the same counts for an SSD, although an SSD is way faster than a spinning disk (and not to confuse you, but an SSD is also RAM but its means is relatively slow compared to normal internal memory (which we call RAM - Random Access Memory).

Still there ?

The RAM-OS Disk (named by my own idea about it and officially not existing anywhere except for what we do with it) is an operating system disk with as many pre-installed Operating Systems on it as would fit and/or you would like (to have). But it boots in a special fashion : the boot procedure copies the OS files to RAM (internal memory) first and when that has been taken care of, the system boots normally but from that OS copy which resides in RAM. N.b.: Formally that would be called a RAM Disk just the same, but now with the difference that the OS is copied to it and boots from there. So there we have the RAM-OS Disk.

In the second the OS has been copied to RAM, the disk itself can be removed already. However, we can not properly see that state, and so we wait until the OS has booted (which we surely can see - as usual) and which booting process itself takes no more than 2 seconds. Thus, when the system is up and running, you can take out the OS Disk (that is just what it is) and now nothing stops working or stalls. As a matter of fact, it will run for months without issue if you only don't shut down the system.

When you do shut down or reboot, you will or should do the following :- Put back in the RAM-OS Disk so changed settings and more "state" can be saved to it;- Use XXHighEnd to shut down or reboot because that will take care of above mentioned saving.When you ordered to shut down, the PC is ready for the next boot (say tomorrow) because the RAM-OS Disk is in, which is required for booting. Or better : for giving its copy of the OS to RAM when the PC is switched on.

It may come across as odd to you, but up till today (or better : yesterday) I am eliminating what you - in the XXHighEnd version you use - still experience with changing the filter setting. At least that is what I recall to have "solved" a month ago. Last week another one somewhere. So what I mean :

At first all these changes were meant to be put through in real time. But back then no large buffers (like of over 30 seconds) existed. Today (and many years already of course) they exist and when used they make all moot because strange things happen, up to you not understanding why playback stops, while all what happens is 10 seconds or even more of filling that first buffer. Next you start pressing buttons (especially the same) and things get worse and worse.

So all these real time things had to be removed. And apparently it takes me many years to find them all.So in 2.07 changed filter settings won't work any more either, if they worked at all, which I doubt; only when you hear Playback restarting, it does.

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Can you recommend anything else to make this an accurate procedure?

Yes :a. Use Unattended anyway, because that is what you use normally;b. Always stop Playback explicitly yourself.

... and get aquainted with the Pause button, because in Unattended it works just the same if you know which buttons to (not) press when (hard to explain, but if you only know it just can work (consistently), you will get there).

You're not asking for it, but in general this is the best "higher level" procedure if you'd ask me :

Mostly a change is perceived right away (that is, with a few years of experience, which you have). Again mostly you can fairly well perceive what you like best. Mind you, I am now talking about explicitly huntiong for a better setting which I myself only do very rarely - when something does not sound right (could be after a hardware change). Now :What's crucial as how I approach the matter, is dat right when you in ad-hoc fashion selected your best setting (which in my case would consume maybe 10 minutes because of using Pause and just continue after the change instead of supid A-B always the same), is ... drop the fact that you changed something and continue whatever you were doing. Do NOT pay attention to your change.

If now something is going to disturb you, the change went to the wrong direction after all and you will notice by the sheer fact that something suddenly disturbs.When nothing disturbs you're not even thinking of the change (I just gave you that order ) BUT the next day or after you may suddenly wonder what the heck has happened because your beloved track such and so suddenly does wonders.And then you know the change has been for the better.When this aha-erlebnis never happens, the change probably didn't do a thing and you only thought it did when applying the change earlier on.

This method should work for everybody, assumed that everybody likes his Clairixa etc. etc. ... because I deal with such things exactly the same. Put in new cable and forget about it. Say shooooot the next day.Or take it out within 3 minutes because you are sure you are wasting your precious listening time. And yes I call that precious because I am obsessed.

Although anything might be helpful to Arvind's situation, the problem is partially psychological because we (Arvind, Bert and me) know that something went wrong in there during production of this particular set.

Currently my only disappointment with the Orelo in my set up, are the upper mids, they are a bit harsh & smeared.

I don't think I ever came across this issue with mine - perhaps with certain XX settings. Have you tried playing around with SFS and Q settings to see if you can tame this? Otherwise, I'm sure Bert will come up with something.

I just wanted to give my impressions of Mani's sound with Orelo's as I have heard his system many times.

Thanks Paul, that puts a lot of things into perspective. Yes, I could have persevered with the Orelos, but I suspect it would have taken a suspended ceiling to really make progress, and I'm not about to ruin the great job the Victorian builders did 130 years ago (when British engineering led the way... how times have changed!).

My system will never sound like yours - yours assaults the senses (in the best possible way - the visceral impact really has to be heard to be believed), whereas mine massages them (but only when using a SET).

Sorry to hear about the problems faced by you with the Orelo in your set up. My room size (8.5x5.6x2.7) is pretty similar to yours, except for the height.

The Orelo is placed 70cm from the back wall & 50cm from the side wall. About 4.0m between speakers (centre to centre). Practically negligible toe in. Listening position is 5m from the speakers.The low end is one of the best I have heard & mind you I have done no dsp settings.

As a matter of fact with my previous speakers, I was facing an issue of standing waves at 60/63Hz & to eliminate that I had bass traps installed. The first thing I threw out of my room, were these traps & now no standing waves.

Currently my only disappointment with the Orelo in my set up, are the upper mids, they are a bit harsh & smeared. Bert is working to find a way to solve this. At this point I would say that the tube amps work better in this area. More musical & involving.

However if your issue is related to room modes it's unlikely that it would differ from one speaker to another. I would think so.

I have also heard Peter's system and it just does not happen at his which is in a very big room with lots of space between the outer edges of the speakers and the side walls. No such luck here there are lots of side wall reflections because so close.

The larger the room the lower the Schroeder frequency and the fewer room nodes...that is simple physics. I would love a big room for audio, but that is not going to happen anytime soon.

I just wanted to give my impressions of Mani's sound with Orelo's as I have heard his system many times. The sound of Mani's Orelo system was almost diametrically opposite to mine (essentially the same system as Mani's). In fact if blind folded anyone listening would have said they were totally different systems with maybe some very small similarities. Not only was the bass completely and totally different (that has been discussed many times) but just about every other aspect was different. The dynamics and "alive" quality of the sound here is similar to a live performance. Bass is simply amazing on live recordings, you can "feel" the stage moving on some recordings (Brubeck Time Further Out for example). From bass through mid range to top end totally different sound. It is inconceivable that it would have been possible to have made tweaks or even radical changes to Mani's system to have made the sound anything like mine.

This is absolutely not a boast, it is simply an observation and I regularly thank the almighty for gifting me the acoustics in my room. BUT I am sure that it was an accident and I am equally sure the almighty did not intend to do any such thing. That is because my room is an ABSOLUTE DOG and would be written off by any self respecting sound engineer as a ridiculous place to even attempt to reproduce music.

As an example with music playing walk the length of my room away from speakers toward the listening position and you will hear cancellations and reinforcements in the bass as you walk. Not just trivial small changes but wapping great big changes.

I have also heard Peter's system and it just does not happen at his which is in a very big room with lots of space between the outer edges of the speakers and the side walls. No such luck here there are lots of side wall reflections because so close.

So here are some quotes from Mani's and Peter's posts above: -

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Orelos need a couple of meters of breathing space......

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.....how else is it working out elsewhere, including my own room (say 80cm from the wall behind them)

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........but which means that it comes to you without too many (early) reflections, especially not from the back.

Peter is (of course) absolutely right the Orelo's reduce rear firing bass. And I have measured that here - over much of the bass frequencies. But certainly not all. Lets take 50hz, in this room a very strange thing happens. Measured inside the throat close to the speakers of the Orelino's the response is very even measured 20 to 200 Hz. But move the microphone out of the throat of the speaker to the interface where the sound leaves the speaker and hits the room and a very strange thing happens. There is an almost total cancellation at 50hz. In the measured response there is a deep notch at 50Hz all around the listening space. If I play a test tone of 50hz and then walk all the way to the listening position you virtually cannot hear it at all. So where does the 50hz go? well the answer is that because it is not being cancelled by the forward going 50hz wave it travels backwards into the conservatory that is behind my speakers. If you stand in the conservatory right at the back whilst the speakers are playing you will find it almost painful to hear. You would not guess it by listening but it does appear to be a small range around 50hz. There is a lot of sound energy travelling backwards from my speakers IN THIS PARTICULAR ROOM and that is proved by measurement and from the fact no one wants to sit in the conservatory while the speakers are playing .

So the acoustics in my room are very far from ideal but you would never think it when you listen. The sound quality according to every one who has listened to them is simply astonishing. I really cannot imagine what it will sound like when the B'ASS and Phisolator mods are applied - my mouth waters in anticipation.

But no matter how good my system sounds at the end of the day the room acoustics have a massive impact on sound quality. And that applies even when the speakers minimise those problems as the Orelo's are designed to do.